Saturday, March 10, 2012

The China Glaze Prismatic collection is really something special. I've seen a lot of polish in my lifetime. Lots of glitters and lots of duochromes especially, as those are my favorite types of polish to wear. But these? I've never seen anything like these. They're duochrome glitters. Not the type of duochrome glitter where each piece of glitter changes colors (like the Ozotic Elytra line or the Kleancolor Chunky Holo line or your average opal-style glitter), but rather a glitter polish that shifts colors across the entire polish at once. The duochrome effect isn't extremely strong, but it's still visible and extremely pretty. I've tried to capture the color shifts the best that I can, but I think these really need to be seen in person to be truly appreciated.

China Glaze Full Spectrum. China Glaze's description: Baby pink bursts into holographic magenta to party with silver, gold, blue, pink and green particles. I don't know about holographic, but the rest is pretty spot-on. There's a lot of different kinds of glitter in these. Super-micro glitter, microglitter, silver, round multicolor, hexagon multicolor, and probably a lot more things that I can't pin down because there's so much going on. This one starts out as a purple shade but then shifts to pink and silvery light lavender with hints of gold.

China Glaze Liquid Crystal. Bright blue holographic with purple tint dusted with silver, gold, green, pink and orange. Again, I don't really notice much holographic glitter in here, if any at all, but there's a ton of different things in it. Liquid Crystal starts out as mostly blue with purple at the edges, but then flashes to purple and pink with a little teal somewhere in the middle.

China Glaze Optical Illusion. Aqua green glimmers with a hint of purple filled with pink, yellow, silver, orange and green flecks. The aqua color of this is very pretty as it is, but then it flashes to blue with purple highlights and it's just... wow. Makes me think of mermaids!

China Glaze Polarized. Silver metallic sheen sprinkled with yellow, pink, orange and green glitters. Maybe it's just my eyes, but I don't see any duochrome shift in this one. It's still a big mix of different colors and textures of glitter, but it stays looking silver all the time.

China Glaze Prism. Grape purple holographic gleams with pink shimmer and glitters with pieces of pink, blue, green, orange, silver and gold. This is one of the more dramatic looking ones. It starts off as a lighter shade of blue and shifts to purple, dusty slate-like blue and little flashes of reddish pink.

China Glaze Ray-diant. Greenish-gold shimmer filled with specks of silver, pink, green, orange and blue. This one starts off as a light green and then fades into lighter, more golden green with pure gold in the center.

Please click this to view more detail. The duochrome effect in the bottles is very strong, but a lot more subtle on the nail. On the nail it's more of a color change type of duochrome, where at one angle it's one color and at another angle it's a different color, rather than a two-colors-at-once type of duochrome.

The formula on these was great. Despite being packed to the brim with multiple types of glitter, they weren't thick and clumpy like I expected. They were thin for glitter polish and flowed surprisingly smoothly onto the nail. I waited a minute or so in between coats just to play it safe and prevent clumping, but I really had no problem with application. They're sheer enough to layer over another polish at one coat but provide complete coverage at three. I am wearing three coats of each color plus one coat of Gelous as topcoat in these pictures. These really need topcoat to look good, and they do absorb topcoat as they dry, so a coat of Gelous (or other thick, clear polish or non-quick dry topcoat) before your topcoat is the best way to go. Dry time was fast.

I'm mesmerized by these. They're so pretty and twinkly and ethereal looking and that little bit of duochrome effect makes them look extra magical. Like I said above, I've never seen anything like these, not counting that Wet n Wild collection that just came out (those seem to be dupes of these, but I haven't swatched them yet to be sure). The duochrome effect could be stronger, and Polarized doesn't seem to have any duochrome at all, but it's really rare to see a truly unique polish these days and overall I'm impressed by them. The easy application, quick dry time and magical effect of these polishes makes them a winner in my book. Very, very cool.

The China Glaze Prismatic Chroma Glitters collection officially releases in April, but is already available at a few places online.

I like glitter, sometimes a lot, but most of the time...not as much as I hate getting it off. I think that's why I'm so fond of glass flecks and whatever it is that Zoya uses for it's polishes like Charla and Sarah.

The main difference is that these have a duochrome color shift, the Eye Candy ones don't. These are smoother and thinner than most of the Eye Candy shades, and to my eye, they're lighter and sparklier. The glitter is a different mix in these, too, and there's a lot of multi-color, multi-shape small glitter in the Prismatics.

Wow, pretty! How did it look after one coat? I might try one of these as a one-coater over a creme for an interesting look but I don't like it when my fingernails look heavily encrusted with glitter -- it's a beautiful look for some but not on me. :-D

I thought these looked pretty good at one coat. The coverage is a little more dense than your average glitter topcoat, but the base color was still able to show through enough to not seem completely buried in glitter. I'll have to swatch these over black to get a better view, but they looked good over my existing Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily manicure :)

Loving Optical Illusion and Ray-diant especially, but each one is beautiful in its own way! I was really thinking these would be a total miss for me, but they look so much more intriguing in these swatches than I had anticipated. I love the rainbow glitter!

I just ordered the entire collection online!! I knew that if I waited for them to hit the shelves they would sell out too fast and I wouldn't get them!! My local Sally's never has enough stock!!! I cannot wait for them to arrive!!!

I just ordered the entire collection online!! My local Sally's never has enough stock, and I knew I would never get them if I waited!!! I cannot wait for them to arrive. As always, Scrangie, your swatches of them are the prettiest I've seen!!! Thank you for getting me more excited about polish!

I think this is the first positive reveiw you gave that doesn't have me rushing to start scheming to buy. I must be under the weather, but I'm not loving these like I thought I would. Your swatches however are beautiful. Maybe (like other posters mention) when I see these in person, my opinion will change.

These are gorgeous. I was hoping to see these be more holographic though, so a bit disappointed in that area. Though I'm probably going to have to get a few of these anyway. Heh. Thanks for swatching! :)

I admit, I was a bit disappointed when I saw a few swatches a while back. I was expecting them to be more holographic, but they're gorgeous none the less. I really like Prism, Liquid Crystal, and Optical Illusion the most. It'll be cool to see what they look like layered over other colors.

I will say something from the bottom of my heart, if u swatch poopie polish u make itLook good somehow. Cause I saw swatches on other blogs and they looked horrible! Thank u for awesome swatches and great review!!!! Again I will have to see them in person :-)

Lovely swatches. Do these look similar to the Wet and Wild Color Icon Bejeweled Collection that just came out? I have those and freaked over how lovely they were- these swatches remind me of them... Nevertheless, I will be finding a way to nab these as well, lol...

As a disclaimer, I actually just have the WnW Jeweled collection (they're dupes), but trust me on this:

Try swatching these over black. For me, they're pretty blah on their own, but over a dark color, they come ALIVE. The duochrome is absolutely insane. For me, just one coat was fine over black and let me tell you, it looks like a galaxy-style manicure without even trying. So gorgeous.

These look fabulous! I'm really curious to see how they'd look under a matte topcoat, because I'm pretty fond of matte-ifying glitter polishes. I'm particularly in love with Liquid Crystal, Optical Illusion and Prism, though I also quite like Ray-diant. Looking forward to nabbing them up when they come out!

Hahaha, I was going to swatch and review these the other day but I put Liquid Crystal on and just couldn't bring myself to take it off. I love these as rainbow skittles over black, too! They're stunning :o)

Hmm, I have to admit- I wasn't thrilled about the one I tried! I have Liquid Crystal, and while it looks gorgeous in the bottle, it didn't seem to translate on the nail. I can't say I saw much duochrome at all, which was frustrating. And the glitter didn't seem to "pop" to me. Not to say that I think it's BAD, it just wasn't as good as I was hoping.

Really? Oh man, Liquid Crystal was mesmerizing when I put it on. It wasn't super duochrome on me, but it did shift colors and sparkle like crazy, so it won my heart. The only one I don't really like is Polarized because it's not duochrome :(

Now I'm wondering if I'm missing something! I'll have to try it again- give it another chance, free of crazy duochrome expectations. We all know crazy duochrome expectations are the hardest to live up to...

My first thought when I saw the Optical Illusion (the green one) was "Oooo mermaid's tail!" Then I saw your description, and you said the same thing! Guess it really does look like a mermaid's tail. I'm drooling over that one :)

So glad to finally get a good review of this collection with swatches. I needed to know what these were going to be like before ordering. With the color shift, it's been hard for me to pick out if I even wanted more than maybe 2. They would all seem to move back to a pale silver pretty much when I was trying to sort them apart from each other - the blue and the aqua were the only ones that clearly stood out as different. But most important was your review on how the application was. What I don't need anymore of are chunky thick glitters. I want things I can use as a sheer over others, a gradient and not just globs of rough finish of glitters. Thanks so much!

I grabbed these as soon as they were abailable online and got them in the mail a a couple weeks ago. As soon as I heard "chunky glitter duochrome" I had to buy all of them xD I love how easy they all were to apply and how fast they dried! These and the Material Girl collection are my favourite that I've bought so far this year. Though they both suck up topcoat xD I've stocked up on $1.50 NYC topcoat so I don't use all my SV trying to smooth them out :)

I've wanted these ever since I saw your swatches. I got to my local Sally's right as they were about to put them on the shelf. I ended up buying them all. Sally's buy 2, get 1 free made it way too easy :). They are so pretty in person. As soon as I got out to my car I lined them up on my dash and just stared at them. Now comes the hard part of which one to wear first. Thank you so much for sharing a great collection, you're so awesome!

Very good question.... Saw some in store this week and they had black caps, too. Maybe they decided not to go with the silver caps after they made the promo images? Or maybe they ran out? I don't know the real reason, but those are two possibilities!

i only have the prism, and im completely inlove with it! when you go out in the sunlight you could blind a person, it sparkles so much!! I once tried two coats of prism, a coat of strobe light by sally extreme wear, and a coat of fairy dust by cg! omg it was sparkle heaven!!! but it chipped off really fast, to many coats i guess, but it was so prettty!!!